GONE WITH A NEW WIND

By Celia Cohen
Grapevine Political Writer

A man can stay in the U.S. Senate too long to be
president. People can look at him and think, "Mr.
Chairman," not "Hail to the Chief."

The 2008 contest for the Democratic nomination has a
breathlessness about it that comes with the promise of
crashing through the marble ceiling of the Federal City
with Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, or at least of
bashing it with John Edwards.

Joe Biden is as much a part of that marble firmament
as the red clay of Tara was part of Scarlett O'Hara.
This election is not his moment. His time is gone with
the new political wind.

Biden shut down his long-shot run for the presidency
after the first votes were cast Thursday evening in the
Iowa caucuses, a man of the Senate to the end. When he
gave his concession speech, he might as well have been
in the chamber as he instinctively cloaked himself in
its flowery protocol for saying what was on his mind.

"Excuse me a point of personal privilege," Biden
said.

In a field with Clinton, Edwards, Obama, Chris Dodd
and Bill Richardson, the senior senator from Delaware
came in next to last. His state has seen this outcome
before. When Pete du Pont, the former Republican
governor, ran for president in 1988, he placed next to
last in Iowa, next to last in New Hampshire, and went
home.

It is the curse of the small state, the burden of the
second tier. Just as the political wind is not on
Biden's side, neither are the logistics.

"I don't think he ever had a window he could campaign
in. Part of it is the media -- because you can only
cover so many candidates in depth -- but Joe also lacked
money," said Jim Soles, a political scientist retired
from the University of Delaware. "He did not have the
glitz or glitter of the top three."

John Daniello, the Democratic state chair, put it
even more succinctly. "The media and the system worked
against him," he said.

Biden exited without bitterness. "There's nothing to
be sad about," he said.

Biden got farther than he did the last time. His
campaign for the 1988 nomination disintegrated amid
plagiarism charges and a tantrum that saw him exaggerate
his academic record. This time he at least got to the
voting.

Biden, who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee,
came out of this one with the focus on his foreign
policy perspective, not on his faux pas. There were
those moments of Joe-being-Joe -- like the blundering
description of Obama as "articulate" and "clean" or the
insinuation that the trucker in the collision fatal to
his wife and baby daughter in 1972 was drinking -- but
they were not overriding.

Instead, Biden was able to use his grasp of
international affairs to shine. His signature political
spot was called "Joe is Right," and it quoted other
candidates praising him. "Amen to Joe, because he's 100
percent right," Clinton said, and "I think Joe is
exactly right," Obama said.

Soles suggested that Biden elevated himself in the
model of George Mitchell, the former Senate Democratic
majority leader called upon for peacemaking in Ireland
and investigating steroids in baseball after he left
office, or Lee Hamilton, the retired Democratic
congressman who led the Iraq Study Group and the 9/11
Commission after chairing the House Foreign Affairs
Committee.

"Whether he likes it or not, Joe was treated as the
elder statesman that he is, even if there was a little
embroidery around the edges," Soles said.

"Joe came out ahead in every respect, except his
pursuit of the presidency. I think Delawareans have a
new appreciation for Joe. Watching Joe talk about issues
may have taught Delawareans that they have given the
nation a far greater gift in Joe Biden than they
previously realized."

Now Biden will do what he has done for the last 35
years when he had to pick himself up, after the
accident, after the last presidential race, after the
brain aneurysms that nearly killed him.